IRISH OVERDETERMINATION: STRATEGIES FOR ENTERING AND LEAVING THE GAELTACHT
IRISH OVERDETERMINATION: STRATEGIES FOR ENTERING AND LEAVING THE GAELTACHT

Summary/Abstract: Irish Overdetermination: Strategies for Entering and Leaving the Gaeltacht. Irish and Gaels are terms that refer to historical and contemporary peoples. Both terms, however, are overdetermined, freighted both with negative stereotypes and impossible standards of cultural authenticity, such that the Irish and the Gaelic part in historical processes is distorted. This article looks at a difficult history in which Gaelic Ireland was nearly destroyed, yet from the eighteenth century, Gaelic heritage was accumulated in the capital, later providing fodder for a linguistic and cultural revival movement that reshaped modern Ireland. Marginal and yet central to modern Irish identity, the Gaelic inheritance today is threatened and thriving, and the Irish language is a minority language that has a superior constitutional standing to majority English.

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